


Confluence

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 14:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8628361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: Laurel is having a baby.It isn't his. He's there anyway.





	

It’s 2:39 AM on a Wednesday morning when it happens. 

The rustling of the sheets beside him is what makes Frank stir at first, and his eyes blink open only to fall shut again seconds later; Laurel’s always been a restless sleeper, her insomnia even worse as of late, and he’s had to learn to acclimate himself to her being up at all hours of the night. So he shifts onto his side with a grunt, just as the mattress moves again, and when he hears a sharp intake of breath he frowns, finally craning his neck to look sideways.

“Laurel?” he mutters, voice raspy with sleep. “’S goin’ on?”

It’s hard to make out her silhouette through the fuzzy greyness of the room, but after his eyes adjust he does, and finds her sitting up beside him, features pulled taut in pain, one hand peeling the sheets up to look at something beneath them and the other cradling the dark curve of her belly, peeking out from underneath the hem of her tank top as it is. She doesn’t say anything for a moment – just stares, dumbly, mouth hanging agape, before she finally manages to come up with any words.

“My water broke.”

“Oh.” He blinks, and sits up too, and when he does he can see the large wet spot on the sheets beneath her. Panic surges through him, though he’s too sleep-addled to really comprehend it. “Shit.” He pauses. Laurel still doesn’t move a muscle, like she’s waiting for him to speak first, tell her what to do and take the lead, and so he pulls himself together long enough to ask, “You okay? Feel any contractions?”

“Earlier,” she murmurs, softly, and rubs the sleep out of her eyes. “Thought… they were Braxton-Hicks.” A pause. “I’m okay, yeah.”

“Okay.” He swallows thickly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, shaking and shaky all over but doing his best to contain it. “Let’s, uh, get this show on the road, huh?”

Laurel nods, and he helps her up and helps her dress, and then proceeds to run around like a veritable maniac, grabbing the hospital bag they’d packed and their driver’s licenses and whatever other sundry items he thinks they might need but probably realistically won’t – a few granola bars, a bottle of water. And all the while Laurel just stares at him, sitting on the couch by the door in her coat and sweatpants and boots, hair messy and not brushed – and she’s watching him, eyes loosely focused, but there’s an emptiness in those eyes too, a bleariness; one that’s become so familiar to Frank. She’s eerily calm, like his panic has leeched all of hers out of her body, and he doesn’t get it, because this isn’t happening to him and she should, by all logic and reason, be the one panicking instead of him. And she’s not. She’s just staring. He doesn’t get it.

Only he does. He gets it. He’d have to be an idiot not to.

They’re out the door and in the freezing cold car within fifteen minutes, and he hovers over her almost obsessively, helping her down into the passenger side, watching her carefully in case she stumbles or falls with her new, ever-shifting center of gravity. He takes his place behind the wheel once she’s settled, cranking up the heater as high as it’ll go, and he’s fully awake now but somehow Laurel doesn’t look the same, like she’s still half-caught in slumber, in some trance-like kind of state.

She stares out the window, as they drive. Stares again and doesn’t give him so much as one word.

If she’s in pain he can’t tell. She just looks empty, still, so heavy, as if every bit of her sense of self has been scooped out and she’s a shell now, barely functioning, running on autopilot, only just breathing. She keeps a hand on her belly, fingers pressed against her coat where it bulges outward, rubbing idly up and down. She stares out the window, as the city rushes by in darkness, orange and yellow and red streetlights patterning her face, flickering in and out like a kaleidoscope. Every now and then he looks at her, tries to summon up some words, some kind of comfort, but he can tell she’s a million miles away, in another dimension, and he’s seen her like this enough in recent months to know that there’s no reaching her right now, no pulling her out of this state.

But he has to try. He’s a stubborn son of a bitch, always has been, and he has to try.

“Hey,” he says, after they’ve been driving for a good ten minutes in silence. He reaches over, taking her hand and holding it in the space between the seats. “You good?”

Laurel jumps, slightly, but seems to snap awake, and nods. “Yeah. ‘M fine.”

“Get excited,” he tries to tease, though the words fall flat, a joke without a punchline. “Little guy’s finally makin’ his big debut.”

“Yeah,” is the only answer he gets, the words low, that same hollow timbre to them. So soft the noise of the road almost overpowers them. She makes an abortive attempt to smile, but it falters and withers and dies on her lips quickly. “I am.”

She isn’t. But he doesn’t press.

He just drives.

 

~

 

Again, for what must be the thousandth time during these nine months, he finds himself amazed by the sheer strength of her.

It’s not bad, at first. They get Laurel checked in and settled in her room; spacious enough, with deep cream walls, the obligatory bed, a few chairs, a window, and a lumpy couch he assumes he’ll be taking up residence on for the foreseeable future. Her doctor and a few nurses cycle in and out for the first hour, then dwindle after that, coming at varying intervals to check her progress and eventually determining she’s dilating very slowly, but dilating all the same. And she’s okay – at least that’s what she keeps telling them, and him. Even if she isn’t.

It’s not the pain that gives her that emptiness, that hollow look in her eyes that keeps flashing in and out, sporadically. Not fear, either. It’s deeper and darker, something he knows he’ll never understand, no matter how hard he tries. And he knows all he can do, all he can offer her now, is the comfort of his presence.

And all he can do is hope it’s enough.

It’s not bad, at first, but the pains build over time, growing stronger and longer and with an increasingly short respite between them, and she endures, bowing and bending under the contractions as she wars with her body but never breaking, always biting back her cries, gritting her teeth, eyes fixed with steely determination. He holds her hand, kissing it and shushing her, wanting to get closer, lie beside her and hold her, but not sure he should dare and not entirely sure how she’d react if he tried. He knows he doesn’t belong in this moment, at her bedside, holding her hand as she labors and bleeds to bring her child into the world.

He isn’t the one who should be here. He isn’t the one she really wants.

But he’s content to be a stand-in, so long as it means being near her. He’ll take what he can get, even if what he can get is all this distance between them, this affection tinged with unfamiliarity and coldness after their months apart, a love that once was maybe almost a love, once upon a time, but is something he can’t quite identify now.

But he’s in awe of her anyway – now more than ever, even broken down and moaning like an animal as she is. In awe of her strength and the power of her body, her unbroken spirit, that fire inside her. She grows restless after a while, weary of lying down, and so he helps her up, and she wraps herself in the fluffy pink robe they’d brought with them and starts to pace around the room, stopping every now and then to brace herself against the wall or against him when the contractions hit.

“Oh _fuck_ I can’t do this,” she grinds out through  her teeth, during a particularly long, vicious contraction. She’s standing with him, arms looped around the back of his neck almost as if in a slow dance, leaning forward slightly and leaning her weight onto him. She’s sweat-soaked by now, face beet-red, and chokes out another moan, voice growing hoarse. “I can’t do this.”

“Yeah you can,” he soothes gently, rubbing her back with one hand. Steady and steadfast and sure. “C’mon. I know you can.”

There’s a pause, and Laurel just looks at him, a wave of defeat settling over her, jaw clenched, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, in so much pain he swears he can feel it like it’s his own – and it kills him, to see her like this. To know there’s nothing he can do for her, no way he can bear this for her. No way to make it better. Any of it.

“You want me to call anybody?” he suggests, lamely. “Michaela, or-”

“No,” she says quickly, shaking her head and exhaling as the contraction ebbs away. “No, I just… I just want you here.”

And that’s a lie, and they both know it. He can’t call the only other person she wants. That unseen third presence, always in the room, always lingering between them.

That ghost.

“I don’t want to do this,” Laurel confesses after a moment, her voice losing her edge, growing soft and tearful. She shakes her head, gulping. “I don’t want him to come out. I want him to stay inside me. This world…” Her voice catches. His heart breaks. “All it does is hurt people.”

Frank’s throat tightens but he draws her closer, still rubbing her back. “That’s not gonna happen, okay? We’re not gonna let anyone hurt him.” He pauses, trying to angle his face downwards and get her to look him in the eyes but failing. “You’d never let anything happen to him, Laurel, I know you wouldn’t.”

“I can’t-” She cuts herself off, and grimaces; a telltale sign another contraction is approaching, coming on fast. “I can’t protect him. And what if something’s wrong? I can… feel it.” She pauses, inhaling sharply, gritting her teeth once more as the pain builds, crashing down on her, relentless. “I think something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” is all he can manage, though it’s a weak assurance. A false one. Everything is wrong, to her. Everything is wrong and nothing will ever be right again but he doesn’t let it show, just firms up his stance, straightens his back. “Nothing’s wrong. Just hold onto me, okay? I got you. Scream, if you gotta. You don’t gotta hold back.”

The hours blur together. There’s no clock in here, at least not that he can see, and time feels like some distant, abstract, invented concept, passing somehow both impossibly fast and impossibly slow. And all he can see is Laurel. Nothing else matters. He lets her lean on him, rubs her back, soothes her as best he can when she cries, strokes her hair as the pain sucks her under and drowns her time and time again. He doesn’t know how she does it. Any of it.

He doesn’t know how she’s still strong enough to do this, after everything. He doesn’t think he ever will. Doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to comprehend the magnitude of her strength, of her power. But still, there’s that air of profound sadness hanging over her, like there’s been since day one; undeniably heavy, ingrained in her skin. Sorrow that’s as much a part of her as her name.

It’s been hard to love this Laurel, ridden with grief and guilt and anger, distrustful of the world, jaded. Hard to understand her, at times. Yet somehow it’s been so easy too, like falling back into a rhythm he’d never broken; a rhythm that’s different, now, but deep down fundamentally the same at its core. He holds her, so easily, so effortlessly, as she cries and screams and moans. Lets her tuck her head beneath his chin and bury her face into his neck as the doctor gives her the epidural and finally, finally, grants her some relief.

He just wants to be with her. Wants all her sorrow and anger and grief along with her. He loves her and he’d never stopped, not once, no matter how hard he’d tried. Now he knows he never will.

When the time comes he holds her hand, steady by her side, and lets her squeeze it so hard he thinks it’s liable snap in two, and grits his teeth through the pain because he knows it can’t possibly compare to hers. She bears down, heaving with every muscle in her body, face crumpled in pain but eyes still alight with that same razor-sharp resolve, to bring this child into the world. To give him life.

And he’s in pain, yeah, but again he finds himself so fascinated by her, even as she unleashes a torrent of curses, some in Spanish, some in English, some in an unintelligible mixture of both. So fascinated by her, as she brings this life into the world, so fierce and fiercely protective of it. Awed. Terrified. Her grip on his hand as she pushes is vicelike but he endures, like she is. Like she’s endured for months.

This isn’t about him. This has never been about him – not once during the last nine months.

Childbirth is bloody. Messier than Frank had expected, and ten times as brutal. But Laurel gives everything in her. Gives every scrap of herself even after he’d been so sure she had no scraps of herself left to give, and it’s bloody but it’s so selfless, the kind of selflessness only a mother can have, and miraculous. And finally, when Laurel bears down for the last time, lurching forward with determination and pushing, and heaving and screaming, everything in the world goes silent. There’s a moment of stillness, everywhere, in every city. In even the most distant galaxy.

Then, a cry.

High-pitched and gurgling. It cuts through the air and makes Frank freeze, his heart and throat locking up, malfunctioning, his limbs suddenly feeling heavy and cold and foreign, all sensation leaving them. Laurel falls back against the bed, sweaty and spent, and he holds her hand, pressing desperate kisses to it as the doctor cleans the baby and wraps him loosely in a little blanket, rising to stand and handing him off into Laurel’s trembling arms, where he fits against her chest so easily, as if he was made to be there, and Frank knows he was. Made by her. Made to fit like a tiny puzzle piece against her.

“It’s a boy,” the man tells them, kind, old eyes smiling down at them. “A healthy baby boy. And with quite a set of lungs on him.”

It’s a moment before Frank can get a good look at the child in her arms, and when he does his heart stutters, gives out inside him. Fails, momentarily, before restarting with an electric jolt, emotion coming over him in waves. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, and it’s too much at once to parse properly but all he knows is that he _feels_ , feels in so many new terrifying kinds of ways.

He’s the tiniest thing he’s ever seen in his life. Black hair. Skin a half-shade lighter than caramel. Frank can’t see his eyes, squeezed closed as they are, but he’d be willing to bet they’re brown; deep, warm brown, warm as honey, eyes he remembers well. Face scrunched up, wailing and flailing his little limbs about, learning how to move them for the first time after being so unceremoniously torn from his happy, cozy world inside of Laurel.

It isn’t his son he’s looking down at. Somehow that barely matters at all.

“You did it,” he murmurs, a smile on his lips as he watches Laurel stare at the child nestled in her arms, astounded, like she doesn’t believe he came from her, that he’s really hers. Frank presses another kiss to her hand, as she gives a tearful laugh and reaches down, smoothing a finger across the thin dusting of dark hair on the baby’s head. “You did it, you did so good. Knew you could.”

“Oh my God,” she sputters, something in between a laugh and a sob. “Oh look at him, look…” Laurel shakes her head, as his tears quiet down and he looks up at her, transfixed, almost reverent. She softens her voice, flipping it up into a high, lilting register he’s never heard her use before, so tender and loving the affection seeps out of her every word almost palpably. “Hi baby boy. Hi, it’s okay. I’m here. Mama’s here. You don’t have to cry.” Her voice breaks. She sniffles, tearing her hand from Frank’s to wipe at her eyes. “You don’t have to cry _ever_.”

Laurel isn’t looking at him. She’s so fixated on the baby that Frank thinks she’s probably forgotten he’s here at all and he doesn’t blame her, because he knows he isn’t the one who should be, the one who truly belongs at her side in this moment. So all he does is watch, silent, as she coos to the baby, playing idly with his diminutive fingers, laughing through her tears as he squirms and wriggles in her arms and grasps her thumb when she offers it to him.

And she’s so in love already that he can’t help but feel like he’s falling too, enchanted by the tiny being that Laurel created, kept safe all these months, against all odds, defying everything and everyone, every force of the universe that’d tried to take him from her. The curious little creature that Laurel loves so completely and unconditionally that he can’t help but feel some of that same love flowing into him, opening up and unlocking new spaces, like letting sunlight into forgotten, dusty old rooms.

He falls in love with Laurel all over again, watching her like that. Watching her become a mother, love the tiny baby in her arms – the only innocence to come out of all this mess, all this darkness. He has seen darkness but now, now he knows he has seen light. And love. And it may not be his flesh and blood there in Laurel’s arms, not his flesh and blood that she carried and protected for months on end and brought into the world, but he loves him just the same. Just as much as he loves her.

It’s a while before Laurel says what they’re both thinking.

It’s only after they’ve cleaned her and the baby up, given her fresh sheets and a blanket, and swaddled him, that she shifts over in bed, making a space for him. And Frank hesitates to get close, at first, then goes obediently, settling down at her side, even if it feels foreign. Even if it feels like this is a moment in which he doesn’t quite belong – and he doesn’t, not really, and he can’t shake that notion, that feeling of being out of place. She just looks down at the baby, for the longest moment in the world, without saying a word. Just playing with his little wrinkled hand, holding it in hers. It’s a rare moment of peace, and Frank can’t remember the last time either of them had one of these. The last time either of them had something _good_ , like this. Something pure and beautiful.

“He looks like him.”

He’d been waiting for the words to come eventually, knew they were inevitable, and he’s not entirely surprised when she speaks them, voice wobbling, tears gleaming in her eyes.

She doesn’t mention Wes often. Hasn’t much at all, all these months, and sometimes he’d wondered if it was because of him, because they’re together but not _together_ , not _something_ to each other but not quite nothing either. It’s too painful for her, even now, like a wound with a scab that’s always half-formed, never healed, still tender. The kind of grief there’s never any real moving on from, no real acceptance. She’d loved him, and Frank knows that. And there’s no hiding from that, from the fact she’d chosen Wes over him and that burns sometimes, a whole hell of a lot, and sometimes he doesn’t know what to feel – but he doesn’t feel angry. No, he’s not angry.

Loving Wes was a part of Laurel. And Wes will always be a part of Laurel. Of her life. In her son. Always around them, a ghost floating just out of reach. He loves that part of her, too. It’s taken time, and patience and understanding. But he loves that part of her too.

Laurel tenses beside him, like she’s afraid of how he’ll react, but all Frank does is give a rueful little grin and place his hand over hers where it rests on the infant’s body.

“Yeah,” he tells her. “He does.”

“He has his eyes,” she manages through her tears, before her face crumples again, and she sucks in a shaky breath. “And his nose. He looks… he looks like him so much.”

Something deep within him fractures, at the look on her face, the sound of her voice, the look of anguish and hurt about her. “Laurel…”

“He should-” A sob cuts her off, as her composure crumbles, and everything she’s been holding back all these months spills forth. “He should _be_ here.”

Frank kisses her hair, again. It’s all he thinks he can do – because he can’t tell her she’s wrong. Wes should be here. He should be here to meet his son, not him. He doesn’t belong here. Maybe he never will. Maybe all he’ll ever be now is an outsider, in Laurel’s life. In her son’s life. A bystander, doomed always to keep watch, stay out of reach.

He’s content with that. He’ll take whatever she’ll give him. And this isn’t about him.

This has never been about him.

“I loved him,” Laurel says, finally, as a sob rattles through her, bone-deep, so deep he swears he can feel it like it’s his own.

Frank nods, calm and steady. He presses his face into her hair, feeling the warmth of her, the softness of her skin. Trying to offer what little comfort he can, what little comfort his sorry ass is capable of.

“I know,” he tells her. And he does. He does know.

A moment passes. Then-

“I miss him.”

Again, Frank nods.

“I know.”

They’re silent, a moment, and it’s a heavy, grave, dark sort of silence, though a moment like this should be anything but, should be full of joy and laughter. The child stares up at her, as if perplexed by her tears, and so she wipes them away, struggling to calm herself – be strong, like she always is, and Frank wants to tell her she doesn’t have to be, that she can break and he won’t mind, but he doesn’t. He stays silent. Watches. Waits for her to speak first.

This isn’t about him. This has never been about him.

“Why’re you still here?” she asks, turning her head to look at him, the question pointed. She sniffles, and shakes her head. “Why’d you… why’d you stay, all these months?” Frank opens his mouth to answer, but she keeps going, cutting him off. “He’s not yours.”

He furrows his brow. “You think I care?”

“Frank…”

“Listen to me,” he urges, lowly. “I know he’s not mine. And I know… he’s never gonna be mine. But I love him.” He pauses, something impossibly heavy welling up in his throat. He stops, and kisses her shoulder, with all the tenderness in the world, hoping she can feel somehow with that kiss that he’s telling the truth, that he means every word he’s saying. “I love him ‘cause he’s yours. ‘Cause he’s a part of you. And you want me to be there, I’ll be there. It don’t make a difference to me if he’s mine or not.” He manages a smile; tiny, subdued. “I love him, ‘cause I love you.”

She meets his eyes, cheeks shiny with tears and scarred by what must be permanent tracks from the flow of them in recent months, eyes puffy and red and surrounded by broken capillaries. Sweaty and exhausted, hardly able to keep her eyes open – and still somehow beautiful. Breathtaking. She’s a force of nature; a force to be reckoned with. And he loves her then. Loves her so much his skin doesn’t feel like it’s enough to contain him anymore, like he might burst right out of it.

“And I do,” Frank murmurs, leaning in close to kiss her forehead. “I love you.”

Laurel manages a watery smile, some of light returning to her eyes. It takes her a moment, but eventually she nods, curling herself up against him, into him, and letting her shoulders droop, giving into her fatigue.

“I know,” is all she says. And she does. He can see it.

That’s all they say for a while, and the quiet settles over them warmly this time, tucked away in this moment and wrapped in the grey dawn as they are. The baby drifts off in Laurel’s arms, certainly just as exhausted as she is by the harrowing events of the day, and Laurel cradles his head in her hand, stroking his hair lightly with her thumb, captivated by each tiny detail, as flawless as a doll, from the minute crease in his brow to the graceful dip of his cupid’s bow dimple just above his upper lip.

He is perfect. It only makes sense. He came from Laurel – perfection from perfection. Beauty from beauty. A sort of equilibrium.

“Still goin’ with what we talked about?” Frank asks suddenly. “For his name?”

“Yeah.” She nods, glancing down at the baby and rocking him gently from side to side as rays of young sunlight widen into beams across his little body, dancing in her hair and dripping onto his face. Her voice is a whisper now, not wanting to disturb his slumber. “Christopher. Little Christopher.” She pauses, and when she continues he can hear the strain in her voice. “For Christophe. It was… Wes’s name, before. The-”

“-name is ma gave him,” he finishes for her, having heard the story before, one night when her insomnia had overcome her, and she’d been sick with nausea and grief and sleeplessness. Laurel looks at him, like she’s surprised he remembers, and he smiles. “It’s a good name.”

“Yeah,” she breathes, abruptly distant, detached. “It is.”

She’s left him, he can tell. Overcome by memories. Haunted by ghosts. Her eyes are empty, features blank, like they were in the car. She’s done this many times, so many times since losing Wes that he’s grown familiar with it, with all her new mannerisms, new behaviors, new quirks and idiosyncrasies that he’s slowly had to decode the meanings of. And he knows when she wants him close, when she needs space, when she doesn’t want to talk and when she needs to talk until she’s run out of words.  

He doesn’t belong here. For the thousandth time today he’s very much aware of that. This moment is for Laurel and her son, and the ghost of Wes Gibbins, and not him. This may be a happy day, a day of new life, but for her it’s as much a day of mourning too, and he knows that.

He’ll give her space. As much as she needs. However long she needs it.

So Frank looks sideways at her and asks, quietly, simply, “You wanna be alone with him?”

But Laurel frowns, coming back to herself, suddenly resolute.

“No,” she says, and reaches over, sewing her fingers in with his as if to anchor him there. “Stay.”

Frank nods, and stays where he is, not moving a muscle. He wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world than with her, right now, and she’s blessed him, been so merciful to allow him to be here with her for this. To allow him to be at her side during all these interminably long months, holding her hair back when she’d been sick to her stomach in the mornings, sitting by her side at doctor’s appointments, rubbing her feet when her back ached, all the unglamorous tasks he’d been more than happy to perform. He’s so lucky, to have been with her for all that, to have edged his way back into her life even though he surely doesn’t deserve it. It’d been hard. It _will_ be hard, and he’s not quite sure where they go from here, him and her and little Christopher, their mismatched little maybe-family.

But he doesn’t care, right then. All he cares about is her, and him – so he stays. He stays, steady by their side. Silent.

After all, this isn’t about him.

This has never been about him.

 

~

 

Years later they’ll take him to the cemetery one day in late autumn, just on the cusp of November.

Frank will be older, not necessarily wiser. And Laurel – well, Laurel will be as beautiful as she was the day he met her, though there will be lines on her face, and she’ll look older than she should, world-weary and aged by grief, but still, still beautiful. And she’ll be holding the hand of a young boy, with wiry black hair and deep brown eyes and a graceful gait and dimples. Quiet, like her. Pensive and thoughtful, and wise beyond his years.

The spitting image of his father. Sometimes so much so it’s unnerving.

And he’ll watch from a distance as Laurel leads him over to an inconspicuous, unremarkable little headstone, sunken into the ground and engraved with Wes’s name, half-overgrown with weeds, unkempt. And the boy will take a seat in the dirt, and peer up at Laurel with those wide, contemplative young eyes as she tells him the story bit by bit, from the beginning; all of it, in a low, measured, rueful tones.

And Frank will keep his distance, hang back. This won’t be about him. This will never be about him – and he’ll know his place.

He’ll know that this moment doesn't belong to him.

A while later Christopher will hop to his feet, his jeans dirty and dusty, and scamper over to where he stands, leaving Laurel behind to watch with a tearful grin as he makes a running leap into Frank’s arms. He’ll scoop him up, and hold him close as the little boy pulls back, eyeing him quizzically, again with that intelligence that belies his years – intelligence and perceptiveness that’s so obviously Laurel that it makes him melt.

“Mom told me somethin’,” he’ll declare, in that squeaky voice of his, giving an indignant, confused pout. “She said you’re not my real dad.”

Frank will think for a second, not sure what he should say, then clear his throat and cock his head to one side. “It’s, uh… it’s complicated, buddy. I am your dad. You know that, just… not the dad that made you.”

“Made me?” he’ll echo, inquisitive.

And Frank won’t be about to explain the birds and the bees to a five year-old, in that particular moment in time, so he’ll just nod without explanation, shifting him up in his arms as Laurel draws closer and comes to a stop beside them.

“Yeah,” Frank will tell him, lip pulling into a grin. “’S why you and me… we don’t look that much alike. But that don’t matter. I’m still your dad.” He’ll pause, and peck him on the forehead, breathing in the scent of his skin, feeling the heat of his body, that familiar little warmth he’s grown to love so so much, beyond all reason. “I’m always gonna be your dad, okay? Nothing’s changin’ that. Ever.”

“My other dad,” he’ll continue, insistent, eyes full of curiosity, a longing to understand things he won’t until he’s older, things he can’t. “Mom said he left.”

Frank will nod. His throat will tighten, and he won’t know why, and so Laurel will step in, reaching over and tucking herself into his side, huddling up against the two of them as a cold breeze blows through, cuts them to the bone.

“He didn’t want to, baby,” she’ll say. “He…”

She’ll drift off, choked up, and so this time he’ll step in, curling an arm around her.

“He was a good guy. We didn’t get along, the two of us. But…” He’ll pause, searching for the right words that seem to continually evade him, time and time again, before settling on, “He woulda loved you. As much as I love you. Much as he loved your mom.”

And Christopher will nod, little brow furrowed, still in thought, deeper, more solemn thought than any child should have, and Laurel will step forward, placing a hand on his arm and rubbing it soothingly up and down, giving him a watery smile, wiping the tears hastily off her cheeks. And he’ll love her, right then. Love her and little Christopher, more than he knows what to do with. Probably more than he’ll ever be able to handle, or even entirely comprehend; it’ll feel like the universe, continually expanding, out and up and in all directions, never able to be contained or quantified.

And maybe it won’t be how he’d envisioned a future with Laurel, any of it, but he’ll feel so immeasurably lucky to have a future by her side at all, and in the life of her child, that he won’t care. Her child. And his. Theirs. Christopher will be theirs, and sometimes it’ll feel odd, almost _wrong_ to say that, like he’s erasing the Wes in him, the man who gave him life, whose blood flows through his veins. The man Laurel loved; the man who Frank will have accepted by then as an invisible, ever-present third person in their lives, always walking unseen by Laurel’s side.

He’ll be his. His son. Not in the conventional way, maybe. But in all the ways that matter.

And Laurel will take his hand then, linking the three of them together like a circuit, nodding at him, telling him she’s ready to go without saying a word. He’ll understand. And he’ll give her hand a squeeze, and let her lead him to the car.

And they’ll carry on like that, like they always have. Like they always will.


End file.
